Outrage! How Dare The Religious Get A Pass!

Reni Eddo-Lodge is an English Literature undergraduate. So what qualifies her to write this column, well, I just can’t fathom…

Just yesterday it was revealed that a number of religious schools in the UK chose to opt out of providing female pupils the HPV vaccine – an immunisation that the World Health Organisation recommends young women receive to prevent cervical cancers.

*crickets*

So?

It is an absolute scandal that young women are being denied access to the vaccine on religious grounds.

Well, not really. They are at a religious school. One therefore supposes that their parents are happy for decisions to be taken on religious matters.

Unless they aren’t really religious but have enrolled their children because the quality of the education’s better, in which case, they’ve not really got a leg to stand on when it comes to complaints…

Not only are some of these schools opting out of providing the injection, but they’re also neglecting to inform GPs of their decision – thus preventing young women from accessing the vaccine altogether.

Really? Is that all it takes to ‘prevent young women from accessing the vaccine’? Are you sure?

Schools that are failing to inform female pupils that they can access the vaccine outside of school premises are doing young women, and their health, a gross disservice.

Oh, please! It’s not like it’s a secret! If their parents want them to have it, they will arrange it. Why should the school get involved?

From peer pressure to “Christian values”, the reasons provided by schools that opted out of the programme are tenuous at best. One opted out because their pupils “follow strict Christian principles, marry within their own community, and do not practise sex outside marriage”. Whether that is or isn’t the case on an individual basis, no school should assume a monopoly over their pupils’ health based on religious belief.

But it’s presumably OK with you if they do so out of ‘social responsibility’, as with the case for pushing contraception and abortion advice into state schools?

7 Responses to Outrage! How Dare The Religious Get A Pass!

ivan

July 25, 2012 at 11:08 am

The big question I have with all these WHO vaccination programs is why the obsession of stuffing people full of ‘medicine’ that 99.9% of people don’t need, is it to make us compliant and so accepting of other ‘medicines’?

Greg Tingey

July 25, 2012 at 11:11 am

Almost completely wrong.

The religious fuckwits (except they aren’t of course, they are extremely cunning, and liars, every single one of them (though deluded, as well) – so they might not be deliberate liars…)

Are witholding if nothing else, information, and deliberately trying to prevent children from availing themselves of a useful prophylactic against a killer disiease.
The best time to immunise for this is at about 12-14 years, even though it may not be needed, until the shild has become an adult and is, say 25 years old.

Oh, please! It’s not like it’s a secret! If their parents want them to have it, they will arrange it. Why should the school get involved?

Precisely.

David A. Evans

July 25, 2012 at 11:55 am

This wouldn’t be the World Health Organisation that commissioned a study on passive smoking and then, when it didn’t say what they wanted it to say, proclaimed it did?

Wouldn’t trust them as far as I could throw the House of Commons.

DaveE.

Tarka the Rotter

July 25, 2012 at 12:08 pm

The WHO is rather like a shady man on a street corner offering ‘sweeties’…you don’t quite know what his motives are and you don’t quite know what you are getting…

Ed P

July 25, 2012 at 1:38 pm

As these vaccinations are usually given when the pupil is 12 – 14 years old, I object to them being called “young women” – they are girls. (Equally there is misuse of the word girl, with the tabloids regularly using it for young women!)

Lord T

July 26, 2012 at 7:54 am

The parents like to think that at 12 their child will be pure until they are 35 when they will settle down and have kids. No be a 16 year old slapper.

Today life isn’t like that.

Even so it is not any governments job to get involved. Why can’t they just fuck off and leave us alone.